IRLF 


CO 
CJT; 


GIFT  OF 


1913 

A  RECALL  OF  BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN 


AN   ADDRESS   BY  THE 

HON.  JOSEPH    BUFFINGTON,  LLD. 

Judge  of  the  Third  Circuit  Court  of  the  United  States 


DELIVERED  AT  LANCASTER,  PA.,  ON  JUNE  12,  1912,  BEFORE 

THETA  CHAPTER  OF  PENNSYLVANIA  OF  THE  PHI  BETA 

KAPPA    SOCIETY,   IN    CONNECTION    WITH 

FRANKLIN  AND  MARSHALL  COLLEGE 


fRESS  OF 
(HI    NEW   ERA   PRINTING  COMPArtf 


A  RECALL  OF  BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN 


AN   ADDRESS    BY   THE 

HON.  JOSEPH    BUFFINGTON,  LLD. 

Judge  of  the  Third  Circuit  Court  of  the  United  States 


DELIVERED  AT  LANCASTER,  PA.,  ON  JUNE  12,  1912,  BEFORE 

THETA  CHAPTER  OF  PENNSYLVANIA  OF  THE  PHI  BETA 

KAPPA    SOCIETY,  IN    CONNECTION    WITH 

FRANKLIN  AND  MARSHALL  COLLEGE 


COM**  IMENTS  OF  THPTA  CHAPTER 
OF  PENNSYLVANIA.    P&  BETA  KAPPA 
IETY  !N  CONNECTION  WITH 

;LIN 

PARY. 


A  RECALL  OF  BENJAMIN  FRANKLIN. 

HON.  JOSEPH  BUFFINGTON. 

The  greatest  romance  of  the  new  world  is  the  actual  life  of 
Benjamin  Franklin,  for  that  life  was  the  dream  of  new  world 
possibilities  reduced  to  reality.  A  seventeen-year-old  appren 
tice  ;  a  runaway  from  a  colony  where  he  was  too  well  known  to 
longer  remain;  a  penniless  stranger  in  another  where  he 
started  his  life  anew  without  acquaintances,  friends  or  influ 
ence;  an  unaided  maker  of  fame  and  fortune  for  himself  at 
forty-two  years  of  age;  a  man  of  tremendous  executive  capac 
ity  and  money-amassing  possibilities,  he  retired  at  that  age  on 
a  fair  competence  and  became  a  contemplative  philosopher; 
thenceforth  the  giver  of  his  life  to  the  lives  of  his  fellow  men 
— the  energizing  magnet  around  which  all  the  altruism  of  the 
most  free-thought  community  in  America  centered.  The 
corner-stone  layer  of  that  colonial  union  on  which  many  claim 
the  nation  was  subsequently  built.  A  scientist  whom  the 
world  recognized  and  revered.  The  first  great  teacher  through 
the  press  of  practical  life — its  habits,  its  sanity,  and  its  econ 
omies.  An  inventor  of  things  that  pertain  to  the  necessities 
of  life,  who  refused  to  lay  fhe~  tribute  of  monopoly  therefor 
upon  his  fellows.  At  fifty-one  the  solitary  representative,  in 
the  alien  and  indifferent  atmosphere  of  England,  of  colonial 
rights.  A  lonely  prophet  in  an  old  world  ignorant  of  the  fu 
ture  of  an  unknown  new  world.  At  seventy,  a  signer  of  our 
Declaration  of  Independence.  At  seventy-two  the  all-power 
ful  advocate  of  weak  and  struggling  colonies  in  the  imperial 

3 

257204 


4  A  Recall  of  Benjamin  Franklin. 

court  of  France.     At  seventy-seven,  a  far-seeing  maker  and 
signatory  to  the  Treaty  of  Paris.     At  eighty-one,  a  maker  of 
our  Constitution — neighbor,  publicist,  author,  teacher,  scien 
tist,   prophet,   humanist,    philosopher,   humanitarian,   patriot 
and  statesman.     His  story  reads  like  the  fantasies  of  a  ro 
mance,  but  its  truth  outvies  fiction.     It  has  been  well  said: 
"  Great  men  need  not  that  we  praise  them ;  the  need  is  ours 
that  we  know  them."     And  in  that  spirit  of  turning  our 
thoughts  to  and  drawing  a  lesson  from  the  life  of  one  of  the 
world's  great,  I  ask  you  to  join  with  me  to-night  in  a  brief  re 
call  of  Benjamin  Franklin.    Great  he  was.    Great  he  has  been 
for  a  century  and  great  the  future  will  hold  him.     The  world 
does  not  deceive  itself.     It  takes  a  really  great  man  to  be  a 
great  man.    It  takes  such  a  man  to  remain  great  to  the  end  of 
his  life;  but  if  the  man  is  great  and  proves  himself  great  to 
the  close  of  his  life,  posterity  will  as  distance  comes  turn  with 
deeper  reverence  to  a  greatness  that  instead  of  disappearing 
with  time  is  only  more  clearly  outlined.    And  it  is  this  great 
ness  of  the  passing  years  that  makes  the  recall  of  the  really 
great — the  Franklins,  the  Washingtons  and  the  Lincolns — so 
profitable.      The    world   recognizes   too   that   greatness   is    a 
growth.     Mere  notoriety,  like  a  gourd,  may  spring  up  in  a 
night,  but  national  reverence  of  a  man's  character  is  a  thing 
of  years.    Like  an  oak  it  is  not  of  a  night,  but  is  the  gathering, 
silent,  insistent  call  of  a  contemplative  century.     For  when 
the  world  has  looked  up  to  one  of  its  leaders  as  an  oak  tower 
ing  high  and  rooted  deep,  and  when  like  that  oak  that  great 
man   has   weathered   the  gale   of   a   century's   criticism   and 
cynicism,  and  the  century's  end  still  finds  his  name  at  the 
head  of  the  roll  call  of  its  immortals,  there  can  be  no  doubt 
that  its  verdict  is  just.    Such  has  been  the  case  with  Franklin. 
Time  and  distance,  instead  of  lessening  his  figure,  have  but 
served  to  make  it  loom  larger,  not  only  011  the  horizon  of  his 
native  land,  but  in  lands  beyond  the  sea.     The  fathers  of  your 
college,  with  prophetic  eye,  evidenced  their  faith  in  Franklin 
by  giving  for  all  time  his  name  to  the  college  they  founded  and 


A  Recall  of  Benjamin  Franklin.  5 

time  has  vindicated  their  judgment.  It  therefore  seems  fit 
ting,  on  this  one  hundred  and  twenty-fifth  anniversary,  that 
one  should  choose  for  his  theme  a  recall  of  the  man.  And  in 
another  way  Franklin  is  peculiarly  connected  with  this  Phi 
Beta  Kappa  occasion,  for  no  man  was  so  much  as  he  a  living 
embodiment  of  that  helpful  motto  of  our  great  society — Philos- 
ophia  Biou  Kubernetes — Philosophy  the  Pilot  of  Life. 

No  man's  life  can  be  really  known  without  a  just  estimate 
of  the  influence  upon  it  of  those  potent  factors,  heredity  and 
environment.  As  seed,  soil  and  sunshine  are  to  plant  life,  so 
in  human  life  we  find  in  heredity  the  seed,  and  in  environ 
ment  the  soil  and  sunshine  that  determine  the  fruitage.  It 
was  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes,  I  think,  who  said:  "  The  educa 
tion  of  a  child  begins  two  hundred  and  fifty  years  before  it  is 
born."  It  follows,  therefore,  that  he  who  takes  the  mere  inci 
dent  of  Franklin's  New  England  birth  as  the  keynote  of  his 
life  has  omitted  from  his  data  the  factors  of  a  just  estimate. 
The  truth  is  that  Franklin  was  neither  a  Massachusetts  nor  a 
Pennsylvania  man.  He  was  essentially  a  Briton,  but  a 
Briton  modified  by  colonial  environment.  In  a  letter  ad 
dressed  to  Lord  Kames,  in  the  early  sixties,  he  himself  says : 
"  No  man  can  more  sincerely  rejoice  than  I  do  on  the  reduc 
tion  of  Canada ;  and  this  is  not  merely  as  I  am  a  colonist  but 
as  I  am  a  Briton.  I  have  long  been  of  opinion  that  the  founda 
tions  of  the  future  grandeur  and  stability  of  the  British  Em 
pire  lie  in  America." 

Josiah  Franklin,  the  father  of  Benjamin,  was  an  English 
man,  who  emigrated  to  America  at  mature  age  and  it  is  an 
interesting  fact  to  know  that  within  a  few  miles  of  where 
George  Washington's  ancestors  lived  in  England  the  Frank 
lins  also  dwelt.  Here  for  generations,  father  and  son,  Frank 
lin  after  Franklin,  had  been  blacksmiths.  Have  you  ever 
thought  what  a  seventeenth  century  roadside  smith  was  in 
England  ?  Let  me  tell  you.  He  was  the  best  posted  man  in 
all  his  county  as  to  what  the  other  counties  of  England  were 
and  what  they  were  doing.  Though  his  shop  might  be  modest, 


6  A  Recall  of  Benjamin  Franklin. 

his  face  begrimed  and  his  book-learning  scant,  he  was  in  the 
forefront  bench  of  the  classes  in  the  working  university  of  life. 
Travel  in  those  days  was  not  indulged  in  by  many.  It  was 
only  the  rare  few  who  ever  got  outside  their  own  neighbor 
hood,  but  the  comparatively  few  who  did  were  the  most  pro 
gressive  men  of  England  and  to  the  smith's  shop  they  all  in 
their  journey  came  and  had  to  come  and  the  smith  met  them 
there.  The  learned,  the  wealthy,  the  powerful,  the  adventur 
ous;  all  who  traveled  from  home  had  to  come  to  the  smith's 
forge  and  as  he  fastened  the  loose  shoes  of  their  horses  these 
travelers  left  with  the  smith  some  of  their  news  and  views  and 
the  smith  in  turn  gave  them  his  own.  From  them  he  gained 
for  his  neighbors  the  news  from  the  rest  of  England  and  in  re 
turn  through  these  travelers  he  gave  to  the  rest  of  England 
the  news  of  his  own  vicinage.  He  was  the  real  genesis  of  the 
mail,  the  newsletter,  the  telegraph,  the  newspaper  of  to-day, 
for  all  these  are  but  as  the  grimy  smith  then  was,  the  world's 
means  of  knowing  what  the  rest  of  the  world  is  doing.  In  the 
democracy  of  his  shop  the  smith  learned  to  stand  unabashed 
before  the  great  men  with  whom  he  was  thrown  in  contact  and 
he  gathered  from  them  the  lesson  that  when  they  came  to  his 
shop  he  was  the  peer  of  the  greatest,  for  his  brain  and  hand 
and  skill  were  necessary  to  enable  wealth  and  power,  learning 
and  pleasure  to  journey  onward.  The  smith's  shop  was  a 
kindergarten  of  democracy.  But  he  was  more  than  a  mere 
news  purveyor,  for  in  the  smith's  work  we  have  the  germ  of 
that  quick,  decisive  initiative  that  is  the  keynote  of  the  world's 
modern  progress.  Other  artisans,  the  weaver,  the  carpenter, 
the  stone  cutter,  the  cobbler,  might  pause  in  their  work  to  plan 
and  think  out  the  next  step,  but  the  smith,  when  the  iron  was 
hot,  must,  then  instantly  and  then  only,  strike  true  and  strike 
hard.  So,  too,  in  that  subtlest  of  work,  the  tempering  of  his 
metals,  he  must  think  deeply  and  observe  closely  the  effect  of 
the  great  laws  of  nature,  the  chilling,  the  tempering,  and 
treating  of  metal  by  the  primary  elements  of  heat  and  cold. 
Sudden  and  slow  chilling,  the  use  of  oils  and  water  for  tempers 


A  Recall  of  Benjamin  Franklin.  7 

and  the  many  thermo-chemical  problems  that  to-day  puzzle 
the  brain  of  great  metallurgists.  It  is  no  fanciful  picture  that 
sees  in  this  long  line  of  thoughtful,  sucessful,  sturdy,  English 
blacksmiths,  keenly  alive  to  the  events  of  the  day,  mixers  alike 
with  the  great  and  the  lowly,  students  of  nature's  laws,  prac 
tical  in  the  fruitage  of  their  work,  the  prototype  of  the  smith's 
descendant.  I  It  is  no  fancy  to  say  that  in  this  long  and  sturdy 
line  of  Saxon  Franklins  that  our  own  Benj  amin  was  then  being 
fitted  to  be  in  touch  with  the  common  folk  and  to  know  their 
lives  and  to  stand  unabashed  before  kings.  It  is  no  imagina 
tion  that  he  had  a  heritage  that  naturally  led  to  a  study  of 
the  great  laws  of  nature.  No  fancy  that  the  forge  of  the  Eng 
lish  roadside  smith  produced  a  colonial  Franklin  stove  in  uni 
versal  use,  the  best  drawing  chimney  of  his  day,  the  man  who, 
when  the  time  came  to  strike,  did  so  and  who  drove  his  blows 
quick  and  hard.  Such  was  the  heritage  from  his  British  fath 
ers,  of  this  man  who,  at  fifty-four  years  of  age,  called  himself, 
as  we  have  seen,  a  Briton,  and  who  regarded  America  as  the 
seat  of  England's  empire. 

And  what  the  heritage  from  his  mother?  She  was  the 
daughter  of  Captain  Peter  Folger,  another  British  emigrant. 
From  them  Franklin  inherited  a  blood  of  toleration  that  made 
him  intolerant  of  ISTew  England's  intolerance.  Of  Peter 
Folger,  Parton  wrote :  "  He  was  one  of  the  few  early  settlers 
of  Massachusetts  who  felt  the  iniquity  of  persecuting  the 
Baptists  and  Quakers  for  opinion's  sake  and  he  lifted  his  voice 
against  that  vulgar  heathenism.  It  was  in  the  dark  era  of 
1676  when  Quakers  and  Baptists  were  still  in  peril  of  being 
publicly  whipped,  branded  and  banished  into  the  wilderness 
that  honest  Peter  Folger  wrote  his  good  doggerel  poem,  'A 
Looking  Glass  of  the  Times/  in  which  those  outrages  were 
pronounced  to  be  the  sin  of  New  England  for  which  a  just 
God  was  visiting  her  with  Indian  Wars  and  massacres.  Dr. 
Franklin  was  proud  to  reckon  among  his  progenitors  a  man 
capable  of  thus  rebuking  his  generation  and  he  quoted  some 
of  Peter  Folger's  roughest  words  with  approbation."  It  was 


8  A  Recall  of  Benjamin  Franklin. 

this  inherited  spirit  of  intolerance,  this  sacred  right  in  sacred 
things,  of  each  man  to  think  out  for  himself  the  great  problem 
of  his  relations  to  God  that  made  Franklin  begin  to  feel 
he  was  out  of  place  in  New  England.  Indeed,  we  learn  that 
as  a  lad  of  seventeen  he  was  "  a  little  obnoxious  to  the  growing 
party  "  and  that  "  his  indiscreet  disputations  about  religion  " 
had  come  to  be  "  pointed  out  with  horror  by  good  people  and 
as  infidel  and  atheist."  Franklin's  father  meant  him  to  be  a 
clergyman,  writing,  he  had  resolved  to  devote  him  "  as  a  tithe 
of  his  sons  to  the  service  of  the  church.'7  I  speak  in  no  disre 
spectful  words  of  this  noble  purpose,  but  one  cannot  refrain 
from  a  sense  of  the  incongruous  when  we  picture  Franklin 
forcing  his  unorthodox  breadth  of  view  into  the  narrow  spirit 
ual  horizon  of  an  orthodox  New  England  clergyman  of  that 
day.  Splendid  as  such  a  clergyman's  work  was  in  many  ways, 
it  is  clear  that  Franklin's  mind  and  Franklin's  soul  would 
have  dwarfed  and  dwindled  in  the  narrow  localism  of  the 
New  England  theocracy  of  that  day.  He  was  meant  for  hu 
manity  and  not  for  New  England  and  Providence  led  him  away 
from  his  birthplace  to  a  life  place  that  could  better  fit  him  for 
that  work.  His  restive  spirit  was  out  of  sympathy  with  the 
religious  life  around  him.  His  inherited  love  of  freedom  of 
thought  for  others  claimed  a  like  right  of  thought-freedom  for 
himself.  The  New  England  religious  life  in  which  he  found 
himself  was  essentially  self-centered  and  the  working  out  of 
one's  own  salvation  its  keynote.  And  just  as  in  a  different 
form  the  selfish,  self-centered  monanticism  of  an  earlier  age 
had  driven  Luther  to  the  broader  altruism  of  looking  out  for 
the  future  of  others  besides  himself  so  it  is  just  as  clear  that- 
the  broad  visioned,  free  thinking,  altruistic  work  of  one  like 
Franklin,  who  afterwards  said  that,  "  the  highest  form  of 
worship  is  service  to  man,"  lay  elsewhere  than  in  his  birth 
place.  Let  us  turn  then  from  that  birthplace,  where  to  him 
the  times  were  out  of  joint,  to  the  environment  which  wel 
comed  him  as  a  footsore,  friendless  and  hungry  lad  of  seven 
teen  and  in  which  after  the  world  had  showered  its  highest 


A  Recall  of  Benjamin  Franklin.  9 

honors  upon  him  his  body  was  laid  to  rest  and  remaineth  unto 
this  day. 

When  young  Franklin  left  Massachusetts  I  ask  the  candid 
reader  of  history  to  tell  me  to  what  colony  could  he  turn  save 
to  those  tolerant  Quakers  against  whose  persecution  his  sturdy 
grandfather  Folger  had  dared  to  raise  a  solitary  voice  of  pro 
test.  The  colony  of  William  Penn  was  above  all  others  in  the 
new  world  a  place  where  freedom  of  thought  and  freedom  of 
speech  were  as  free  as  free  men  could  make  them.  In  that  col 
ony  there  was  actual  liberty  to  worship  God  according  to  the 
dictates  of  one's  own  conscience.  That  liberty  and  the  con 
science  and  the  freedom  were  meant  not  only  for  the  founders' 
race  and  church  but  equally  for  men  of  all  other  races  and  all 
other  churches.  That  colony  was  in  unique  contrast  to  each 
and  all  of  its  sisters.  Each  of  them  had  been  substantially 
the  outgrowth  of  a  single  race  and  a  single  religion  and  it  is 
no  reflection  on  any  of  those  races  or  religions  to  say,  what 
every  truthful  historian  recognizes,  that  where  any  race,  and 
especially  where  any  one  religion,  has  the  power  of  monopoly, 
it  rarely,  if  ever,  fails  to  exert  it.  In  the  seventy  odd  years 
that  had  passed  since  American  colonization  had  its  begin 
ning  in  the  settlement  at  Jamestown,  the  Quakers  had  learned 
the  lesson  in  their  experience  both  in  European  despotism  and 
American  freedom,  so-called,  that  all  types  of  religion  which 
were  dominant  in  those  European  countries  and  the  American 
colonies,  however  they  differed  in  dogma  or  practice,  united 
in  one  common  universal  fact,  that  they  were  all  solidly 
united  as  members  of  a  church  militant  when  it  came  to 
handling  Quakers.  The  Quaker  had  suffered  from  persecu 
tion  by  them  all,  but  with  a  vastness  of  generosity  and  with  a 
liberality  then  unknown  in  the  religious  world,  William  Penn 
caught  the  over-looked  spirit  of  a  Master's  love  that  "  beareth 
all  things,  believeth  all  things,  hopeth  all  things  and  endureth 
all  things,"  and  opened  up  his  colony  without  reservation  to 
all  races  and  to  all  religions.  "  Come  unto  me  all  ye  that  labor 
and  are  heavy  laden  and  I  will  give  you  rest.'7  And  so  it  came 


10  A  Recall  of  Benjamin  Franklin. 

that  when  William  Penn  set  foot  on  the  banks  of  the  Delaware, 
he  then  and  there  for  the  first  time  dedicated  and  consecrated 
to  real  freedom  of  thought  American  soil  as  it  had  never  been 
dedicated  before.  When  the  real  history  of  the  founders  of 
the  American  colonies  shall  be  written  it  will  be  found  that  in 
broadminded  outlook,  in  the  catholicity  of  humanity,  in  just 
appreciation  of  the  rights  of  all  men,  there  was  no  founder  on 
the  American  coast  to  compare  with  William  Penn.  The 
heart  of  humanity  everywhere  instantly  responded  to  the  gen 
erous  spirit  of  the  Quaker's  invitation.  The  English,  the 
Welsh,  the  Irish,  the  German,  the  Dutch,  the  Scotch — all  re 
sponded  as  none  of  these  races  had  ever  done  in  the  case  of 
any  other  colony.  Whole  communities  of  the  old  world  were 
depopulated  to  create  replicas  of  the  old  mother  land  in  the 
several  counties  of  Pennsylvania.  And  so  it  was  not  only  in 
races  but  in  religions  also.  The  church  of  Rome,  the  church  of 
England,  the  follower  of  Luther,  the  adherent  of  Calvin,  the 
Moravian,  the  Dunkard,  men  of  all  religions  and  men  of  no 
religion,  found  for  the  first  time  under  God's  sky  and  on 
American  soil  what  real  religious  freedom  actually  was.  It 
is  a  noteworthy  fact  that  no  colony  had  up  to  that  time  at 
tracted  the  mighty  trecking  of  those  two  great  strains  of  strong 
blood,  the  German  and  the  Scotch,  a  movement  that  made  whole 
sections  of  Pennsylvania,  another  Germany  and  Scotland,  as 
did  this  invitation  of  Penn.  There  could  be  no  doubt  that 
such  a  colony,  whose  cornerstone  was  that  freedom  of  thought 
which  other  colonial  builders  had  rejected,  would  foster  intel 
lectual  growth  and  progress  of  every  kind.  In  this  colonial 
atmosphere  of  tolerance,  art,  science,  learning  rooted  and 
ripened  until  Pennsylvania  became  the  thought-leader  among 
the  colonies.  The  intellectual  as  well  as  the  topographical  key 
stone  and  cornerstone  of  the  nation.  Her  medical  schools  were 
the  foremost  in  the  colonies  and  attracted  students  from  all 
others.  Indeed,  the  advance  of  medicine  and  its  kindred 
branch  of  chemistry  can  be  shown  by  the  fact  that  when  one  of 
the  oldest  of  New  England  colleges  took  the  then  novel  step  of 


A  Recall  of  Benjamin  Franklin.  ^11 

teaching  chemistry  it  had  to  send  Benjamin  Silliman  to  Phila 
delphia  for  a  year's  study,  as  the  only  place  in  America  where 
he  could  acquire  such  knowledge.  And  thus  it  came  about 
that  the  first  hospital  in  America  was  established  there  and 
Pennsylvania's  metropolis  and  then  capital  assumed  the  novel 
duty  of  cleaning  the  streets,  a  pioneer  step  in  which  we  find 
the  beginning  of  that  great  field  of  municipal  hygiene  and 
sanitation  that  to-day  is  the  most  serious  duty  of  municipal 
life, — a  step  whose  progressive  influence  has  crossed  the  seas 
to  drive  yellow  fever  from  Havana  and  Manilla  and  made  pos 
sible  the  Panama  Canal.  Time  permits  me  but  to  suggest  to 
your  minds  the  many  evidences  of  the  progressive  life  of 
colonial  Pennsylvania  that  may  be  studied  by  anyone  inter 
ested  in  that  subject.  In  our  own  profession  the  phrase,  "  a 
Philadelphia  lawyer,"  became  proverbial  all  over  the  land— 
and  a  tolerant  community  is  wont  to  produce  great  men  in  the 
law — and  the  broad  atmosphere  of  freedom  the  Pennsylvania 
lawyer  imbibed  is  best  shown  by  the  fact  that  when  that  great 
question  of  jury  right  arose  in  the  neighboring  colony  of  New 
York  where  the  judges  who  were  then  under  the  power  of  re 
call  by  the  king  sought  to  control  free  speech  by  holding  that 
a  crown-chosen  judge  but  not  the  jury  could  pass  on  the  libel 
lous  character  of  publications  aimed  at  the  sovereignty  on 
which  the  judge's  tenure  depended,  it  was  to  Pennsylvania  the 
lovers  of  liberty  turned  for  help,  and  in  response  to  that  Mace 
donian  cry,  our  liberty  taught  colony  sent  from  the  atmosphere 
of  freedom  Andrew  Hamilton  who  in  that  case  established  the 
great  principle  that  a  jury  could  pass  on  the  character  of  the 
libel. 

In  this  stimulating  field  of  Penn  the  apprentice  boy  found 
kindred  spirits  and  in  it  he  ripened  to  early  and  rich  fruitage. 
His  versatility  was  remarkable  and  in  every  sphere  his  suc 
cess  was  as  marked  as  it  was  rapid.  In  this  broadened  envir 
onment  he  was  constrained  to  broaden  and  in  turn  he  helped 
to  broaden  it.  Coupled  with  a  speculative  mind  was  an  in 
tense  common  sense  that  led  him  by  his  industry,  his  thrift 


12  A  Recall  of  Benjamin  Franklin. 

and  his  foresight  to  gather  at  a  very  early  age  a  fortune  for 
those  days,  but  when  he  had  gathered  it,  with  a  breadth  of 
view  that  affords  an  envied  model  to  many  a  man  who  has 
made  his  whole  life  subservient  to  money  getting,  Franklin, 
with  a  philosophic  resolve  to  make  money  his  servant  instead 
of  his  master,  withdrew  from  active  business  life  and  gave 
himself  to  his  colony,  his  country  and  his  fellow  men.  Hav 
ing  gained  a  living  from  his  country,  he  turned  to  living  for 
that  country.  Through  Poor  Kichard's  wise  sayings,  his  alma 
nac  and  other  writings  Franklin  became  the  greatest  human 
teacher  the  world  has  probably  ever  known  in  the  people's  in 
dustry,  in  leading  them  to  hardheaded  common  sense  in  the 
commonplace  walks  of  everyday  practical  life.  He  was  the 
first  American  writer  whose  works  were  widely  circulated 
abroad.  Indeed,  in  their  time  they  were  more  widely  read 
than  any  book  save  the  Bible.  His  scientific  research  covered 
every  field,  electricity,  ocean  phenomena,  medicine,  chemistry, 
heat  and  cold.  His  great  mind  seemed  to  grasp  all  spheres  of 
human  knowledge.  The  other  day  I  was  surprised  to  find 
that  he  was  the  first  intelligent  observer  and  writer  about  the 
Gulf  Stream  and  indeed  that  he  actually  gave  the  Gulf  Stream 
its  name.  I  was  equally  amazed  to  read  letters  of  his  in  which 
he  prophetically  brought  before  the  medical  profession  the 
value  of  open  air  in  the  treatment  of  disease.  Indeed, 
the  open  air  treatment  of  tuberculosis  and  many  other  prac 
tical  benefits  are  all  clearly  outlined  in  Franklin's  writings. 
That  it  has  taken  a  great  profession  more  than  a  century 
to  realize  the  truth  of  what  the  layman  Franklin  told  them 
in  plain  words  shows  the  prophetic  type  of  his  great  mind. 
He  lived  not  only  in  his  own  time  but  a  century  beyond  it. 
He  was  the  father  of  modern  electricity,  and  we  who  think 
of  him  only  as  observing  the  phenomena  of  electricity 
through  his  kite  lose  sight  of  the  intensely  practical  nature 
of  the  man.  The  lightning  rod  was  his  practical  sugges 
tion  for  protection  from  lightning  and  I  find  him  speaking  in 
one  of  his  letters  of  "  An  old  religionist  whom  I  had  relieved 
in  a  paralytic  case  by  electricity,  and  who  being  afraid  I 


A  Recall  of  Benjamin  Franklin.  13 

should  grow  proud  upon  it  sent  me  his  serious  though  rather 
impertinent  caution."  The  scientific  study  of  heat  and  his 
practical  bent  of  mind  led  him  to  invent  the  widely  used 
Franklin  stove  and  to  devise  a  form  of  chimney  that  came 
into  general  use,  but  in  these  as  in  the  copywriting  of  his 
books,  Franklin  refused  to  avail  himself  of  any  personal  pro 
tection  or  gain.  His  public  life  and  private  practice  rang  true 
to  his  motto  that  "  the  highest  form  of  worship  is  service  to 
man."  He  started  the  first  public  library  in  Philadelphia. 
He  was  instrumental  in  founding  in  that  city  the  academy 
from  which  the  University  of  Pennsylvania  grew,  just  as 
later  he  came  to  Lancaster  and  helped  lay  the  cornerstone  of 
this  college  which  bears  his  name.  He  organized  the  first  anti- 
slavery  society  in  the  world  and  as  its  president,  and  fittingly 
in  this  colony  of  freedom  where  the  Declaration  of  Independ 
ence,  the  Constitution,  and  the  flag  had  their  birthplace,  he 
wrote  and  signed  the  first  petition  ever  presented  to  Congress 
for  the  abolition  of  slavery.  Neither  slavery  of  mind  or 
slavery  of  body  found  lodgment  in  Franklin's  brain  or  heart. 
During  all  this  time  he  took  an  active  part  in  public  service. 
He  was  not  of  that  type  of  men  who  become  public  men  be 
cause  they  make  themselves  public.  The  simple  fact  was  that 
when  anything  of  a  public  nature  was  to  be  done  the  public 
demand  was  for  Franklin's  leadership,  moderation,  common 
sense  and  ability.  His  leadership  was  not  of  the  self-sought 
or  self-announced  type.  It  was  a  leadership  that  came  from 
the  conviction  of  the  people  that  he  was  fitted  and  needed  to 
lead.  {JLike  Moses  and  Luther,  like  Washington  and  Lincoln, 
like  every  great  leader  that  is  truly  great,  he  distrusted  his 
ability  to  lead.  His  call  came  from  the  nation  and  not  from 
himself.  He  was  one  of  the  great  founders  of  our  mail  serv 
ice  and  his  far-seeing  mind  caught  the  benefits  of  a  wider  ex 
change  of  environment  and  social  intercourse  as  a  uniting 
factor  among  the  colonies.  His  swarthy  forbear,  the  English 
smith  at  the  cross-roads,  had  engraven  that  in  his  nature.  He 
attended  the  meetings  of  delegates  from  other  colonies  and  his 


14  A  Recall  of  Benjamin  Franklin. 

wise  counsels  contributed  greatly  to  furthering  the  common 
interest  in  matters  of  common  concern.  He  took  strong 
grounds  on  the  uniting  of  the  colonies  for  their  protection  on 
the  frontier  in  the  French  and  Indian  wars.  In  the  Brad- 
dock  campaign  his  services  were  invaluable  in  the  practical 
and  vital  point  of  securing  wagon  trains  through  his  influence 
with  the  Pennsylvania  farmers.  His  interest  in  that  cam 
paign,  and  the  same  remark  may  be  made  of  Washington, 
showed  that  these  two  great  far-seeing  minds,  representing  as 
they  did  the  two  great  far-seeing  commonwealths  of  Virginia 
and  Pennsylvania  behind  them — the  two  commonwealths  that 
won  the  gateway  to  the  west  and  in  the  gaining  of  the  west 
laid  the  real  foundation  of  American  extension — Franklin 
and  Washington  both  realized  as  few  men  did  that  the  great 
future  of  America  lay  in  the  Mississippi  Basin.  In  a  pro 
phetic  letter  to  Lord  Kames,  which  I  have  referred  to  before 
in  speaking  of  the  taking  of  that  country  and  Canada  from 
the  French,  Franklin  said :  "I  am  therefore  by  no  means  for 
restoring  Canada.  If  we  keep  it  all  the  country  from  the  St. 
Lawrence  to  the  Mississippi  will  in  another  century  ~be  filled 
with  British  people.  Britain  itself  will  become  vastly  more 
populous  by  the  immense  increase  of  its  commerce.  The  At 
lantic  sea  will  be  covered  with  her  trading  vessels  and  your 
naval  power  thence  continually  increasing  will  extend  your 
influence  around  the  whole  world."  At  a  later  day  and  in  the 
midst  of  the  Revolution,  when  the  American  Congress  by  a 
vote  to  which  there  were  only  three  recorded  votes  in  the  nega 
tive  advised  that  John  Jay  agree  to  a  treaty  with  Spain  by 
which  the  mouth  of  the  Mississippi  should  be  forever  closed 
as  a  free  gateway  to  the  sea,  Franklin  summed  up  the  contro 
versy  in  a  nut  shell  of  homely  common  sense — "  Poor  as  we 
are,  yet  as  I  know  we  shall  be  rich,  I  would  rather  agree  with 
them  to  buy  at  a  great  price  the  whole  of  their  (Spain's)  right 
on  the  Mississippi,  than  sell  a  drop  of  its  waters.  A  neighbor 
might  as  well  ask  me  to  sell  my  street  door."  In  truth,  his 
mind,  reaching  so  far  into  the  future,  had  so  grasped  the 


A  Recall  of  Benjamin  Franklin.  15 

possibilities  of  the  west,  and  he  had  become  so  imbued  through 
Braddock's  mistakes  of  Britain's  inability  to  effect  its  win 
ning,  that  he  became  convinced  the  colonies  must  win  it  them 
selves.  We  accordingly  find  that  his  first  public  mission 
abroad  was  to  England  in  1757  and  its  purpose  was  to  secure 
the  taxation  of  Penn's  proprietary  lands  in  order  to  give  Penn 
sylvania  the  means  to  carry  on  the  French  and  Indian  War. 
From  this  time  on  Franklin  spent  the  greater  part  of  his  time 
in  Europe  and  away  from  his  family.  It  was  a  sacrifice  of 
private  life  to  public  duty,  and  at  the  close  of  his  life  Frank 
lin  said,  as  many  another  man  can  who  has  given  himself 
to  public  service,  "  They  engrossed  the  prime  of  my  life,  they 
have  eaten  my  flesh  and  seem  resolved  now  to  pick  my  bones." 
From  1762  to  1767  he  lived  continuously  in  England  trying 
to  secure  a  repeal  of  laws  that  were  obnoxious  to  the  colonies 
and  later  his  duty  forced  him  to  spend  from  1776  to  1785 
in  France,  where  he  succeeded  in  effecting  an  alliance  with 
that  country  whereby  he  obtained  the  French  troops  and  the 
French  money  that,  coupled  with  the  financing  of  Morris, 
enabled  Washington  to  fight  the  Kevolution.  After  Washing 
ton  and  Rochambeau  had  compelled  the  surrender  of  Corn- 
wallis,  Franklin  remained  two  years  in  Paris  and  largely  as 
the  result  of  his  work  the  Treaty  of  Paris  was  signed  in  1783, 
which  was  the  verdict  and  judgment  of  the  Revolution.  By 
it  Franklin  secured  not  only  the  independence  of  the  thirteen 
colonies  along  the  Atlantic  seaboard,  but  he  gained  what  was 
equally  important,  a  surrender  from  England  of  the  Missis 
sippi  Basin  as  far  west  as  the  Father  of  Waters — a  diplo 
matic  territorial  victory  on  which,  through  the  gain  of  the 
Mississippi  Valley,  the  future  greatness  of  the  American  na 
tion  then  depended  and  now  rests. 

This  hurried  sketch  gives  us  the  principal  facts  in  Frank 
lin's  life  and  from  it  we  pass  to  a  necessarily  brief  considera 
tion  of  the  effect  of  these  things  on  the  make-up  of  the  man. 
His  life  naturally  divides  itself  into  three  periods:  first,  the 
pre-Revolutionary,  or  formative  one;  second,  the  Revolution- 


16  A  Recall  of  Benjamin  Franklin. 

ary,  or  effective  period;  and  third,  the  post-Revolutionary,  or 
reflective  period. 

Turning  first  to  the  prexRevolutionary  period  of  Franklin's 
life  what  strikes  one  especially  is  Franklin's  essentially  Brit 
ish  make-up  at  that  time.  A  Briton,  but  a  Briton  modified 
by  colonial  environment.  He  was,  as  we  noted  above,  the 
prototype  of  that  great  army  of  British  colonists  who,  under 
a  wiser  motherhood  than  Britain  gave  to  Franklin,  are  to-day 
making  Canada,  Africa,  Australia,  New  Zealand  and  India 
what  they  are,  and  who  in  turn  in  the  reflex  of  colonial  spirit 
are  doing  so  much  to  mould  and  make  England  herself;  for 
the  English  colonies  are  in  truth  to-day  wielding  a  greater 
influence  on  England  than  she  is  on  them.  For  mark  you,  the 
great  tide  of  English  emigration  to  her  colonies  is  to-day  as 
then  but  the  race  acknowledgment  that  in  the  problems  of 
life's  betterment  and  opportunity,  the  colony  gives  more  prom 
ise  of  the  answer  to  ideals  than  does  the  motherland.  This 
same  relation,  that  of  a  colonist  convinced  that  the  land  for 
him  was  the  colony,  but  recognizing  still  his  devotion  to  the 
motherland  and  reverence  for  her  institutions,  was  Franklin's 
state  of  mind  during  the  pre-Revolutionary  period.  But  the 
England  of  that  day  had  not  yet  learned  the  lesson  she  had  to 
learn  later  through  the  loss  of  her  oldest  colonial  child.  To 
Franklin,  the  loyal  British  colonist,  came  the  quiet,  unrecog 
nized  but  insistent  call  of  his  new  world  country  for  self  gov 
ernment.  Had  England  heeded  that  call  from  men  like  Frank 
lin  and  Washington,  had  it  even  given  an  answering  echo  to 
their  calls,  the  colonial  agitators  of  that  day  might  have  agi 
tated  in  vain  and  separation  from  England  been  postponed 
for  a  generation.  The  Franklins,  the  Washingtons  and  the 
Marshalls  might  have  died  loyal  colonists  and  the  work  of  the 
Revolution  been  left  to  the  Websters,  the  Jacksons  and  the 
Calhouns  of  the  next  generation.  But  destiny  had  filled  its 
time.  A  headstrong  ruler,  a  foolish  cabinet,  a  failure  of  the 
old  world  to  recognize  the  signs  of  the  times  in  the  new,  drove 
with  the  irresistible  logic  of  events  the  British  colonist  Frank- 


A  Recall  of  Benjamin  Franklin.  17 

lin  out  of  his  pre-Revolutionary  period  into  becoming  a  na 
tion  founder  in  the  next.  The  stern  logic  of  events  was  driv 
ing  Franklin — for  he  came  to  separation  slowly  and  unwill 
ingly — from  his  birthright  as  a  British  colonial,  and  he  was 
forced  to  become  the  first  great  American  whom  the  new  world 
gave  to  the  old.  For  the  truth  is  that  Franklin  was  meant  for 
the  universe.  In  the  economy  of  humanity  he  belonged  to  the 
world  and  to  humanity  in  its  fullest  and  freest  expression. 
It  has  well  been  said:  "Benjamin  Franklin  was  the  first 
American  born  on  this  side  of  the  water  who  was  meant  for 
the  universe.  His  mere  existence  was  a  sort  of  omen.  It  was 
impossible  to  suppose  that  a  people  who  could  produce  a  man 
of  that  scope  and  intellect  could  long  remain  in  a  condition  of 
political  dependence.  It  would  have  been  preposterous  to  have 
had  Franklin  die  a  colonist  and  go  down  to  posterity,  not  as 
an  American,  but  as  a  colonial  Englishman.  He  was  a 
microcosm  of  the  coming  nation  of  the  United  States."  And 
so,  by  the  silent  march  of  the  nation,  which  only  the  thought 
ful  see,  and  for  which  only  the  thoughtful  prepare,  the  great 
onward  march  of  events  carried  Franklin  out  of  the  colonial 
pre-Revolutionary  stage  of  his  life  into  the  era  of  his  middle 
life,  the  Revolutionary  or  effective  period.  And  how  effective  ? 
He  is  the  only  American  whose  name  is  signed  to  those  three 
great  instruments,  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  the  Treaty 
of  Paris  and  the  Constitution.  By  the  first  he  helped  save 
democracy  from  autocracy.  By  the  second  he  helped  make  the 
title  of  democracy  to  democracy  more  absolute.  By  the  third 
he  sought  to  save  democracy  from  itself. 

The  three  men  who,  to  my  mind,  were  the  bed-rock  creators 
of  American  independence  were  George  Washington,  Benja 
min  Franklin,  who,  as  noted,  laid  the  corner-stone  of  this  col 
lege,  and  Robert  Morris,  who  was  one  of  its  first  board  of 
trustees.  Without  the  work  of  each  of  these  three  men  in  their 
several  spheres,  no  one  of  the  others  could  have  made  inde 
pendence  a  reality.  Washington  at  the  head  of  the  army; 
Morris  repleting  the  scant  war-chest  on  which  the  army  lived ; 
30 


18  A  Recall  of  Benjamin  Franklin. 

and  Franklin  bringing  hands  across  the  sea  in  French  alliance, 
French  gold  and  French  armies — these  were  the  fighting  and 
sustaining  factors  on  which  independence  was  secured.  The 
Adamses,  the  Patrick  Henrys,  the  John  Hancocks,  with  their 
courageous  agitation,  were  the  men  who  made  America  inde 
pendent  on  paper;  but  Morris,  Franklin  and  Washington  were 
men  who  made  the  independence  on  paper  independence  in 
fact.  It  was  all  well  enough  to  refer  to  the  imaginary  "  three 
millions  of  people  armed  in  the  holy  cause  of  liberty,"  but 
this  phrase  was  but  a  sounding  brass  and  timbling  cymbal. 
The  scant  three  thousand  who  shivered  around  the  huts  up 
yonder  on  the  Pennsylvania  hills  of  Valley  Forge  knew  the 
three  millions  armed  in  the  holy  cause  only  netted  about  three 
thousand,  and  Franklin  felt  it  necessary  to  get  the  places  of 
some  of  the  three  million  supplied  by  Eochambeau  and  his 
thousands  of  Frenchmen,  who  later  shared  with  Washington 
the  glory  and  credit  of  the  actual  results  at  Yorktown.  The 
herculean  efforts  of  Morris  were  required  to  feed  and  clothe 
an  army  with  money  that  was  so  worthless  that  to-day  we  un 
consciously  revere  his  unrequited  services  when  we  speak  of  a 
thing  as  not  worth  a  continental.  But  these  three,  Washing 
ton  at  the  camp  fire;  Franklin  at  the  council  table;  and 
Morris  at  the  war  chest — made  up  that  on  which  all  wars  are 
successfully  waged,  courageous  fighting,  wise  financing  and 
diplomatic  diplomacy,  and  the  connection  of  two  of  these  great 
men  with  this  college  makes  a  reference  to  their  great  service 
timely.  And  in  that  connection  I  cannot  forbear  saying  that 
I  trust  the  day  will  come  when  in  front  of  Independence 
Square,  and  on  the  side  of  Washington's  statue,  will  be  placed 
a  fitting  recognition  of  Robert  Morris,  who  so  loyally  and  un 
selfishly  strove  to  make  Washington's  work  possible. 

In  the  post-Revolutionary  era  of  Franklin's  life  came  his 
supreme  work  in  helping  to  make  the  Constitution.  He  had 
signed  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  which  had  called  self- 
government  into  existence.  He  had  signed  the  Treaty  of 
Paris  which  gave  self-government  a  place  of  habitation  and  he 


A  Recall  of  Benjamin  Franklin.  19 

had  signed  the  Constitution,  which  he  and  those  who  labored 
with  him  thought  was  the  best  way  of  insuring  that  self  gov 
ernment  should  not  perish  from  the  earth. 

The  world's  history  is  a  series  of  the  swings  of  the  pendulum 
to  different  fields  of  thought.  Between  the  limits  of  those 
swings  in  the  pendulum's  path  lie  those  ranges  that  mark  a 
nation's  changed  view  point.  One  hundred  and  twenty-five 
years  ago  Washington  and  Franklin  and  the  fathers  who  had 
freed  themselves  from  monarchical  government  control  found 
themselves  confronted  by  the  problem  of  creating  a  new  form 
of  government.  They  went  about  it  slowly,  deliberately, 
thoughtfully,  and  as  you  will  see  from  Franklin's  life,  prayer 
fully.  They  realized  that  there  were  some  inherent  weaknesses 
in  a  pure  democracy  that  had  in  the  end  destroyed  Greece  and 
Rome.  For  these  reasons  they  distrusted  the  principle  of  an 
entire  nation  governing  itself  without  representatives.  On  the 
other  hand,  they  saw  the  inherent  weakness  of  monarchy  was 
the  arbitrary  and  selfish  government  of  an  absolute  ruler  like 
George  III.  To  avoid  these  two  extremes  they  determined  to 
form  a  constitution  and  make  it  their  chart.  The  significance  of 
the  constitution  as  the  real  foundation  of  the  new  country 
was  at  once  recognized  and  liberty  loving  people  everywhere 
felt  that  a  new  era  had  come  into  the  field  of  national  govern 
ment  in  a  constitutional  government.  That  constitution  has 
proved  the  model  from  which  liberty  loving  peoples  every 
where  have  drawn  inspiration  and  forms  of  government. 
When  the  South  American  republics  were  to  be  builded ;  when 
South  Africa  was  to  be  federalized — it  was  to  the  constitution 
of  the  United  States  both  countries  turned  for  a  model.  Its 
principles  are  interwoven  in  the  systems  of  the  great  English 
colonies  and  in  its  struggles  for  what  are  best  for  government 
in  the  new  world,  China,  the  oldest  nation  of  the  old  world, 
reached  out  and  found  guidance  in  the  chart  that  Franklin 
had  helped  draw  and  Lincoln  helped  save.  And  we  have  to 
day  the  novel  situation  that  when,  after  one  hundred  and 
twenty-five  years  of  trial  of  constitutional  government,  some 


20  A  Recall  of  Benjamin  Franklin. 

of  our  people  are  becoming  distrustful  of  it,  the  oldest  and 
wisest  nation  of  all,  to  wit,  the  Chinese,  after  trying  every 
thing  else  for  some  four  thousand  years,  has  come  to  the  con 
clusion  our  Constitution  is  the  best  form  and  they  are  model 
ling  from  it.  It  remains  for  time  to  determine  whether  the  Amer 
ican  experience  of  a  century,  or  the  Chinese  of  forty,  shall 
prove  the  wiser.  During  the  century  and  more  that  followed 
the  making  of  the  Constitution  our  country  has  grown  great 
under  it.  It  has  proven  the  one  thing  around  which  the  men 
of  the  north  rallied  to  save  the  Union  and  recalling  that  con 
stitution  the  men  of  the  south  were  content  to  come  back  into 
the  Union,  feeling  that  was  the  one  thing  above  all  others  to 
protect  them  after  their  return,  for  the  south  had  but  to  recall 
Lincoln's  assurance  to  them  in  his  first  inaugural  that  "  all  the 
vital  rights  of  minorities  and  of  individuals  are  assured  to 
them  by  affirmations  and  negations,  guaranties  and  prohibi 
tions  in  the  Constitution."  For  a  century  the  pendulum  of 
constitutional  regard  swung  to  the  limit  of  reverence  for  that 
sublime  document  which  had  made  and  preserved  us  a  nation. 
It  had  proved  itself  to  be  the  holy  writ  of  self-government  and 
it  had  proved  so  because  it  based  self-government  on  govern 
ment  of  self.  But  we  have  come  upon  a  time  when  the  pendu 
lum  has  swung  to  the  other  side.  The  popular  thought  to-day 
seems  to  be  that  constitutions  are  hindrances  instead  of  helps 
to  government,  that  instead  of  securing  liberty  they  are  deny 
ing  it.  But  in  spite  of  these  changes  in  constitutional  regard, 
let  us  remember,  my  friends,  that  though  the  pendulum 
swings  the  old  clock  does  not.  The  figures  on  its  face  still  bear 
true  witness  to  the  unchanging  law  of  time.  And  as  there  are 
certain  truths  in  science  that  no  change  of  opinion  can  alter, 
so  there  are  certain  elements  in  human  nature — and  govern 
ment  is  simply  human  nature  applied  on  a  large  scale — which 
are  unchangeably  fixed.  And  of  all  unchanging  things  the 
most  changeless  thing  in  human  nature  is  self.  And  self  and 
its  selfishness  are  only  aggravated  when  the  selfishness  of  indi 
viduals  becomes  the  accumulated  force  of  the  selfishness  of  a 


A  Recall  of  Benjamin  Franklin.  21 

nation.  Let  us  stop  for  a  moment  and  ask  ourselves  what  is 
true  self-government  by  a  people.  It  is  not  alone  the  right  of 
a  people  to  be  self-governed,  but  it  is  the  duty  also  of  a  people 
to  govern  itself,  for  true  self-government  is  after  all  govern 
ment  of  self  by  self.  The  self  must  not  only  govern  but  it  must 
be  willing  to  be  governed,  and  this  being  so  it  follows  that 
true  self-government  by  a  nation  is  nothing  more  and  nothing 
less  than  the  principle  of  self-government  in  the  individual 
life  collectively  applied  to  self-government  by  a  nation.  Do  I 
make  that  clear  ?  Let  me  illustrate.  ,  The  proof  of  a  really 
great  man's  strength  of  character  is  his  willingness  and  abil 
ity  to  protect  himself  against  his  own  selfishness.  To  do  this 
the  greater  and  stronger  a  man  is,  the  more  carefully  and 
thoroughly  does  he  place  limits  on  himself  and  lay  down  for 
his  own  conduct  in  life  certain  limitations,  physical,  moral 
and  mental.  These  self-imposed  limitations  are  the  Rubicons 
across  which  he  can  only  go  at  the  sacrifice  of  his  real  man 
hood.  Now  our  fathers  knew  how  they  as  colonists  had  suf 
fered  from  the  rulers  bound  by  no  constitutional  limitations. 
They  knew  from  painful  experience  that  the  power  to  exer 
cise  power  will  breed  abuse  of  power,  unless  in  some  way  re 
strained.  They  knew  that  men  in  the  aggregate  would  in  form 
ing  a  nation  at  times  become  just  as  selfish  and  unjust  as  the 
unlimited  individual  monarch  would  become.  They  realized 
that  selfishness  was  so  deep-grained  in  all  men  that  unless 
limited  it  would  show  itself  in  men  collectively  as  well  as 
singly.  That  this  was  true  in  a  single  man  who  was  called  a 
king  or  in  a  collection  of  men,  who  were  all  rulers  or  kings, 
which  was  a  pure  democracy.  And  recognizing  this  danger 
in  a  single  man,  which  they  had  seen  in  England,  and  knowing 
it  existed  in  collections  of  men,  which  they  had  seen  in  the 
downfall  of  Greece  and  Rome,  they  reasoned  thus:  We  are 
considering  the  experiment  of  a  nation  being  its  own  ruler 
and  to  do  so  we  must  arrange  for  a  ruler  of  some  kind.  So 
while  in  reality  and  truth  this  is  a  government  of  the  whole 
people,  yet  as  all  men  comprising  the  whole  people  will  cot 


22  A  Recall  of  Benjamin  Franklin. 

likely  agree  on  all  things,  we  will  establish  the  principle  of  a 
majority  rule,  namely,  we  will  agree  that  for  the  time  being 
a  majority  shall  be  the  ruler  of  the  nation;  but  inasmuch  as 
the  minority,  who  are  not  the  rulers  of  the  nation,  must  be 
protected,  for  they  are  a  part  of  the  people,  and  inasmuch  as 
those  who  are  in  the  majority  may  in  time  grow  selfish  and  do 
wrong  to  the  helpless  minority,  we  will,  following  that  reason 
able  course  which  commends  itself  to  us  as  individuals,  pro 
tect  our  minority  selves  from  our  self-governing  majority  by 
this  constitutional  chart,  which  so  long  as  we  continue  it  shall 
bind  and  limit  that  majority  of  ourselves  so  that  it  cannot 
wrong  the  minority  of  ourselves.  They  said  that  if  England 
had  had  a  constitution  and  King  George  had  been  limited 
thereby  he  would  not  have  done  those  things  which  in  our 
declaration  we  charge  him  with  doing  and  which  caused  this 
revolution,  viz.,  violation  of  our  rights  of  person  and  property ; 
taxation  without  representation;  and  to  quote  other  words  of 
the  Declaration  of  Independence,  and  which  it  will  surprise 
many  of  us  to  know  was  one  of  the  causes  of  the  Revolution, 
namely,  that  the  judges  of  that  day  were  subject  to  the  recall 
of  the  king  or  to  use  the  words  of  our  Declaration,  King 
George  would  not  have  "  made  judges  dependent  on  his  will 
alone  for  the  tenure  of  their  office."  When,  then,  our  fathers 
proposed  by  a  constitution  to  put  certain  limitations  upon 
themselves  were  they  unpatriotic  and  undemocratic  ?  When 
Franklin  and  those  with  him  who  had  won  freedom  through 
much  tribulation  and  with  a  hangman's  rope  around  their 
necks  if  they  failed,  were  they  despising  that  freedom,  when 
as  free  men  they  in  effect  said — We  are  now  so  free  that  we 
can  afford  to  surrender  some  of  our  freedom  for  the  common 
good.  Is  a  stream  restrained  of  its  freedom  if  in  its  course  a 
dam  be  built  and  its  confined  waters  made  to  serve  some  use 
ful  purpose?  Is  a  man  who  fences  his  field  any  the  less  en 
joying  his  own  because  the  fence  which  keeps  his  neighbor's 
cattle  out  also  keeps  his  own  within  proper  bounds?  Were 
these  wise  men  like  Franklin  not  applying  to  their  govern- 


A  Recall  of  Benjamin  Franklin.  23 

ment  what  you  and  I,  if  we  are  following  Franklin's  example, 
are  doing  every  day  in  our  own  lives  ?  Are  you  doing  to-day 
whatever  you  have  power  to  do  ?  or  are  you  voluntarily  placing 
upon  yourself  limitations  and  restrictions  which  you  observe 
in  all  your  intercourse  with  your  fellows?  The  old  truth  is 
equally  true  of  men  and  of  nations,  that  no  man  liveth  unto 
himself  and  no  nation,  or  the  majority  of  no  nation,  lives  of 
and  for  itself  alone.  This  civilization  of  ours,  the  business 
life  of  a  community,  the  happiness  of  family  life — all  would 
drift  into  unworkable  confusion  if  each  of  us  did  not  volun 
tarily  place  upon  himself  limitations  which  we  will  not  pass 
although  we  have  the  power  to  pass  them.  And  if  this  deep 
ingrained  principle  of  self-imposed  limitation  is  the  true  safe 
guard  of  individual  life  when  and  at  what  point,  tell  me,  can 
that  principle  be  safely  abandoned  when  self-controlled  indi 
viduals  unite  themselves  in  a  self -controlled  government?  If 
for  any  one  man  to  revoke  and  recall  the  self-imposed  limita 
tions  of  his  own  life  is  to  undermine  the  foundation  stones  of 
his  individual  character,  when  does  the  undermining  process 
of  the  character  of  the  nation  disappear  when  a  hundred  mil 
lions  of  people,  associated  in  the  form  of  government,  revoke 
and  recall  their  self-imposed  national  limitations?  No,  no; 
the  safety  of  the  individual  man  lies  in  a  self-controlled  indi 
vidualism,  no  more  and  no  less  than  the  safety  of  a  self-gov 
erning  people  rests  on  constitutionally  established  self-control. 
And  in  so  holding  we  make  no  fetish  of  constitutions.  They 
are  not  laws  of  the  Medes  and  Persians  for  which  there  is  no 
change,  for  a  constitution  wisely  makes  provision  for  its  own 
change,  but  mark  you,  in  a  constitutional  way.  This  consti 
tutional  power  of  constitutional  change  has  been  and  always 
will  be  exercised.  The  closed  door  of  our  federal  constitution 
has  already  opened  fifteen  times  to  welcome  fifteen  different 
amendments  during  its  history.  The  state  of  Pennsylvania 
has  had  four  different  constitutions  since  the  colonial  times. 
The  great  state  of  Ohio  is  now  changing  hers,  and  already 
possessing  this  salutary  power  of  change  and  amendment  when 


24  A  Recall  of  Benjamin  Franklin. 

changed  conditions  demand  them,  and  provided  with  a  method 
of  change  that  involves  deliberation,  argument,  patience  and 
forbearance,  can  we  regard  as  necessary  any  other  method  of 
constitutional  change  ?  Indeed,  my  friends,  I  cannot  help  but 
feel  we  are  all  getting  unduly  stirred  up,  if  not  a  trifle  hyster 
ical  on  this  question  of  constitutional  restriction  as  applied  to 
the  question  of  the  constitutionality  of  laws.  An  impression 
has  been  fostered  that  every  helpful  law  in  some  way  runs  the 
risk  of  being  declared  unconstitutional.  The  mischiefs  in 
that  respect  are  not  as  bad  as  we  imagine.  To  illustrate  I  ven 
ture  the  thought  that  the  United  States  to-day  is  the  most  law- 
burdened  nation  on  the  globe.  As  soon  as  a  man  is  elected  to 
a  legislative  body,  he  feels  it  his  solemn  duty  to  propose  and 
have  some  new  laws  passed.  I  presume  there  are  in  force  in 
the  forty-odd  states  of  the  union  to-day  more  than  150,000 
laws.  That  means  an  average  of  about  3,000  to  each  state, 
with  the  Acts  of  Congress  not  included.  This  estimate  is 
moderate,  for  I  find  that  in  the  state  of  Pennsylvania  alone 
the  legislature  of  last  year  added  466  laws  to  the  ones  we 
already  had.  These  150,000  laws  stand  on  our  statute  books 
to-day  as  enforcible  constitutional  measures,  more  in  number, 
I  venture  to  suggest,  than  the  laws  of  all  Europe  combined, 
and  when  some  one  is  complaining  to  us  about  constitutions 
and  their  injustice  in  thwarting  legislation,  let  us  ask  that 
person  to  tell  us  how  many  of  the  150,000  laws  have  been  held 
unconstitutional,  and  if  he  knows  anything  about  the  facts  he 
will  find  the  percentage  of  acts  stricken  down  as  unconstitu 
tional  on  the  far  side  of  the  decimal  point.  You  will  pardon 
me  for  injecting  this  personal  testimony,  but  I  presume  it  is  a 
fair  example  of  the  practical  experience  of  many  brother 
judges.  In  the  twenty  years  of  my  judicial  life  the  consti 
tutionality  of  many  laws,  state  and  federal,  has  been  raised 
before  me,  but  I  have  never  once  enjoyed  that  pleasure  which 
courts  are  popularly  supposed  to  glory  in,  namely,  of  holding 
a  law  was  unconstitutional.  It  is  true,  that  here  and  there  in 
the  thousands  of  courts  and  judges  our  country  has.  there  have 


A  Recall  of  Benjamin  Franklin.  25 

been  and  there  will  be  unwise,  mistaken  decisions,  and  such 
will  continue  to  be  the  case  so  long  as  to  err  is  human.  It  is 
possible  that  the  changed  economical,  commercial  and  social 
conditions  of  modern  life  have  not  been  duly  appreciated  by 
all  judges  and  that  there  are  men  on  the  bench  to-day  whose 
mental  vision  is  not  of  the  breadth  that  we  would  desire  it, 
but  it  is  equally  true  that  there  are  only  the  same  differences 
of  temperament  and  viewpoint  on  the  bench  that  there  are 
among  physicians  and  clergymen  and  all  branches  of  pro 
fessional  men.  But  in  all  these  professions,  the  mistakes  that 
are  made,  the  faults  of  physicians  and  clergymen,  and  teach 
ers  and  judges,  will  be  found  to  be  more  often  the  fault  of  the 
particular  man  who  applies,  or  thinks  he  applies,  the  law,  the 
gospel,  the  text-book,  the  medicine,  rather  than  the  fault  of  the 
law,  the  gospel,  or  the  medical  systems  themselves.  Mistakes 
in  regard  to  the  constitution !  Why  a  man's  own  constitution 
is  a  settled  thing,  but  whether  that  man's  constitution  shall 
have  the  breath  of  life  breathed  into  it  by  one  physician,  who 
will  save  the  man's  life,  or  whether  that  constitution  will  go 
to  the  grave  under  another  physician,  is  not  a  purely  consti 
tutional  question,  but  its  solution  depends  on  the  wisdom  of 
the  man  in  selecting  his  own  physician  who  is  to  handle  his 
constitution.  But  because  some  physicians  have  not  been  skil 
ful  and  some  judges  have  not  been  wise,  in  dealing  with  con 
stitutions,  let  us  not  permit  the  unskilfulness  of  the  one  or  the 
unwisdom  of  the  other  to  unwisely  lead  us  to  give  up  our  con 
stitutions,  physical  or  governmental,  entirely,  or  to  overlook 
the  fact  that  the  vast  majority  of  doctors  heal  and  the  vast 
majority  of  judges  help  men  to  the  enjoyment  and  security 
of  life,  liberty  and  happiness.  And  just  as  there  are  men 
called  to  the  ministry  who  have  been  called  in  a  whisper,  we 
will  find  men  in  judicial  work  who  have  been  called  to  that 
work  in  an  equally  low  voice,  and  I  venture  the  thought  that 
if  the  care  in  the  original  call  were  greater  and  more  pro 
nounced,  the  less  we  would  hear  of  the  necessity  of  subsequent 
recall,  for  after  all,  the  belated  recall  is  but  a  confession  of  the 


26  A  Recall  of  Benjamin  Franklin. 

earlier  mistake  in  the  call.  And  this  leads  me  to  a  word  of 
cheerful  optimism  to  you  college  men  who  are  entering  on  life. 
Take  with  you  the  cheery  spirit  of  cheery  optimism  that  will  re 
fuse  to  be  led  into  gloomy  pessimism  by  the  wrong-doing  of  the 
few.  Remember,  my  dear  young  friends,  that  the  great  mass  of 
your  fellow  men  and  fellow  women  are  as  honest  and  as  square 
as  you,  and  if  you  stand  and  act  on  that  platform  you  can  rest 
assured  your  neighbors  are  about  as  good  as  you.  When  old 
Elijah's  pessimistic  eyes  were  opened  he  found  there  were 
many  thousand  of  his  unsuspected  countrymen  whose  knees 
were  as  stiff  as  his  when  it  came  to  bowing  to  Baal.  And  just 
remember  too  that  just  as  these  seven  thousand  had  probably 
said  nothing  about  their  virtue  because  Elijah  had  not  heard 
of  them,  so  now  there  is  a  reserve  force  of  unheralded  virtue 
and  righteousness  in  this  country  of  yours  that  you  never  sus 
pect  until  it  vents  itself  in  acts.  That  unwritten  law.  unpub 
lished  in  statutes,  but  graven  on  the  hearts  of  American  men, 
"women  and  children  first,"  gave  this  country  in  the  case  of 
the  "  Titanic,"  an  insight  into  the  unheralded  moral  qualities 
of  our  people  that,  like  deep  rivers,  flow  quiet  and  strong 
through  the  nation's  life.  No,  no ;  we  must  not  conclude  that 
everything  is  going  to  the  bad  because  a  few  individual  men 
and  women  do  so  and  their  shortcomings  are  heralded  all  over 
the  land.  I  often  think  as  I  read  of  the  wrongdoing  here  and 
there  all  over  the  country  with  which  the  columns  of  our 
papers  are  largely  taken  up  of  what  an  infinitesimal  part  of 
the  nation's  life  they  evidence.  For  one  cashier  who  violates 
his  trust  and  becomes  a  defaulter  I  can  point  you  to  thousands 
of  cashiers  over  the  country  who  to-day  command  the  respect 
and  esteem  of  their  fellow  men  and  are  more  faithfully 
watching  and  safeguarding  funds  of  others  than  they  are  their 
own.  For  one  woman  who  has  strayed  from  the  path  of  virtue 
and  whose  sin  fills  the  morbid  columns  of  papers  devoted  to 
that  side  of  life  in  some  scandalous  divorce  proceeding  I  can, 
thank  God,  point  you  to  millions  of  homes  in  this  country 
where  quiet  women  are  true  to  the  teachings  of  childhood,  to 


A  Recall  of  Benjamin  Franklin.  27 

the  loyalty  to  husband,  to  the  motherhood  of  the  family.  For  one 
poor  fellow  in  a  gray  suit  who  had  yielded  to  temptation  and  pil 
fered  your  mail  and  whose  derelictions  have  been  made  the  sub 
ject  of  a  sensational  article  I  can  point  you  to  thousands  upon 
thousands  of  his  fellow  carriers  who,  in  every  city  and  hamlet  in 
this  country,  are  incessantly  doing  their  daily,  unheralded, 
unpublished  duty.  For  one  exceptional  case  that  is  delayed 
in  our  courts,  for  one  suit  where,  through  the  stern  require 
ments  of  the  law,  the  miscarriage  of  a  jury,  or  the  lack  of 
knowledge  of  the  judge,  an  injustice  has  been  done  and  widely 
commented  upon  with  a  view  to  undermining  the  confidence 
in  the  administration  of  justice  I  can  point  out  to  you  thou 
sands  upon  thousands  of  cases  where  law,  jury  arid  judge  have 
worked  even  and  exact  justice,  no  account  of  which  ever  enters 
into  the  story  you  read  in  the  public  print,  and  for  one  man 
on  the  bench  whose  actions  have  been  such  as  to  call  forth 
public  criticism  I  can  point  to,  from  one  end  of  this  land  to 
the  other,  thousands  and  thousands  of  just  judges  whose  lives 
have  been  as  pure  and  just  as  they  have  been  quiet  and  un 
heralded  in  the  public  print.  The  truth  is  that  only  the  ex 
ceptional,  only  the  abnormal  ever  finds  the  light  of  publicity. 
Error,  sin,  wrong-doing  are  what  interest  us,  and  we  pay  no 
attention  to  the  quiet  routine  and  daily  duty  faithfully  per 
formed.  I  have  often  felt  that  if  a  paper  and  magazine  ig 
nored  the  mistakes  of  men  and  simply  recorded  the  quiet  doing 
of  duty  in  life  it  could  not  exist  for  no  one  would  care  to 
read  it.  So  my  young  college  friends,  in  summing  up  the  true 
significance  of  the  sensationalism  of  the  day,  do  not  in  your 
enthusiasm  overlook  the  overwhelming  mass  of  virtue,  up 
rightness,  integrity,  in  the  life  and  work  of  the  uncounted 
majority  of  our  own  people.  The  truth  is  that  the  great  mass 
of  people  want  to  do  right  and  that  those  who  deliberately 
do  wrong,  either  in  public  or  private  affairs,  are  in  a  small 
minority.  And  in  all  these  matters  the  great  need  of  recall 
is  for  us — each  one  of  us — to  recall  ourselves  to  the  higher 
plane  of  life  and  to  remember  that  the  streets  of  Damascus 


28  A  Recall  of  Benjamin  Franklin. 

were  kept  clean  because  every  man  in  Damascus  cleaned  the 
street  in  front  of  his  own  home. 

But  to  recall  myself  to  the  subject  in  hand — full  of  years, 
honored  as  no  man  has  ever  been  honored  before  by  the  world 
in  such  varied  fields,  recognized  as  a  man  universally  wise, 
touching  the  varied  fields  of  literature,  statesmanship,  science, 
education  and  practically  every  phase  of  human  life,  Frank 
lin  came  through  it  all  the  same  modest,  simple  minded,  great 
man  he  had  been  all  his  life.  With  a  head  as  clear  as  a  sage's 
he  retained  a  heart  as  simple  as  a  child's.  A  man  of  strong 
views  himself,  one  who  would  naturally  call  forth  strong  oppo 
sition  to  his  views,  he  had  no  personal  enemies  in  public  or 
private  life.  He  possessed  that  wonderful  poise  of  fairness 
and  justice  that  lifted  him  out  of  the  plane  of  personal  antag 
onism.  In  writing  John  Jay  he  said :  "  I  have,  as  you  observe, 
some  enemies  in  England,  but  they  are  my  enemies  as  an 
American.  I  have  also  two  or  three  in  America,  who  are  my 
enemies  as  a  minister,  but  I  thank  God  there  are  not  in  the 
whole  world  any  who  are  my  enemies  as  a  man,  for  by  His 
grace  through  a  long  life  I  have  been  enabled  so  to  conduct 
myself  that  there  does  not  exist  a  human  being  who  can  justly 
say  '  Ben  Franklin  has  wronged  me.' '  He  had  that  wonder 
ful  faculty  which  Lincoln  possessed  of  always  stating  his  ad 
versary's  case  so  fairly  and  his  own  so  strongly  that  any  sense 
of  personal  antagonism  disappeared  in  the  atmosphere  of  his 
earnest  effort  to  reach  the  truth.  Like  Lincoln,  too,  he  had 
that  keen  sense  of  humor  which  both  used  with  kindness  of 
heart,  but  with  merciless  logic,  to  illustrate  and  puncture  the 
false  reasoning  of  those  opposed  to  them.  Indeed,  it  is  said 
that  to  Franklin,  instead  of  Jefferson,  would  have  been  en 
trusted  the  writing  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence  but 
his  colleagues  feared  he  would  inject  some  of  his  humor 
into  it. 

There  is  another  thought  in  connection  with  the  forming 
of  that  constitution  that  we  do  well  to  bear  in  mind  in  connec 
tion  with  Franklin.  In  these  present  days  when  men  seem  to 


A  Recall  of  Benjamin  Franklin.  29 

be  groping  for  new  things  in  government,  when  the  self-suffi 
ciency  of  each  man  essays  to  solve  every  governmental  ques 
tion  from  the  standpoint  of  individual  selfishness  and  to  dog 
matically  put  forward  his  views  as  the  only  views,  it  does  us 
all  good  to  recall  that  splendid  picture  of  the  venerable  and 
beloved  Franklin  then  over  eighty  years  of  age,  rising  in  his 
place  in  the  convention  that  was  then  forming  the  Constitu 
tion.  In  convincing  words  he  told  his  colleagues  that  for 
weeks  they  had  been  unable  to  agree  on  anything;  that  they 
had  been  blindly  groping  about  examining  all  forms  of  gov 
ernment  and  liking  none.  In  convincing  words  he  reminded 
them  that  in  the  beginning  of  their  struggle  with  Britain  that 
they  had  had  daily  prayers  in  that  room  for  divine  protection ; 
that  their  prayers  had  been  answered  and  he  added :  "  All  of 
us  who  were  engaged  in  the  struggle  must  have  observed  fre 
quent  instances  of  a  superintending  Providence  in  our  favor." 
And  then  turning  to  them,  this  great  man,  against  whom  the 
cry  of  irreligious  was  often  raised,  said :  "  And  have  we  now 
forgotten  that  powerful  friend?  Or  do  we  imagine  we  no 
longer  need  his  assistance?  I  have  lived,  sir,  a  long  time; 
and  the  longer  I  live  the  more  convincing  proof  I  see  of  this 
truth,  that  God  governs  in  the  affairs  of  men.  And,  if  a 
sparrow  cannot  fall  to  the  ground  without  his  notice,  is  it 
probable  that  an  empire  can  rise  without  his  aid?  We  have 
been  assured,  sir,  in  the  sacred  writing,  that,  '  Except  the  Lord 
build  the  house  they  labor  in  vain  that  built  it.'  I  firmly  be 
lieve  this  and  I  also  believe  that  without  his  concurring  aid, 
we  shall  succeed  in  this  political  building  no  better  than  the 
builders  of  Babel."  In  the  history  of  government  building  I 
know  no  picture  so  sublime,  no  words  so  eloquent,  as  those  in 
which  the  wisest  man  of  his  day  and  generation  moved  the 
makers  of  the  Constitution  to  implore  God's  wisdom  and  guid 
ance  before  all  other  business  at  the  opening  of  each  day's 
work,  unless  it  be  those  great  words  of  Lincoln,  as  on  that 
February  morning,  when  he  left  his  Springfield  neighbors  on 
his  mission  to  prayerfully  save  the  Constitution  which  Frank- 


30  A  Recall  of  Benjamin  Franklin. 

lin  had  prayerfully  founded :  "I  now  leave  you  not  knowing 
when  or  whether  ever  I  may  return,  with  a  task  upon  me 
greater  than  that  which  rested  upon  Washington.  Without 
the  assistance  of  that  divine  being  who  ever  attended  him  I 
cannot  succeed;  with  that  assistance  I  cannot  fail."  As  we 
look  hack  on  these  men,  who  made  and  saved  our  Constitution, 
Washington  on  his  knees  in  the  thickets  of  Valley  Forge, 
Franklin  moving  for  daily  prayers  in  Independence  Hall  and 
Lincoln  invoking  the  guidance  of  Washington's  God,  may  not 
the  thoughtful,  prayerful  hearts  of  the  nation  voice  the  peti 
tion  that  every  hand  that  seeks  to  change  a  constitution  made 
under  God's  guidance  will  as  reverently  seek  that  same  guid 
ance  in  changing  "  what  God  hath  wrought." 

And  there  is  another  great  principle  for  which  Franklin 
and  the  men  of  his  day  contended,  which  I  think  can  well  be 
made  the  subject  of  a  thoughtful  recall.  That  was  the  prin 
ciple  of  representative  government.  "No  purer  or  more  de 
voted  friend  of  the  people  has  ever  lived  in  American  history 
than  Benjamin  Franklin.  ~No  man  was  closer  to  his  fellow 
men  than  he.  His  democracy  was  unquestioned  and  he  re 
tained  his  simplicity,  his  humanity  and  his  neighborliness 
wherever  he  was.  But  with  all  these  there  was  no  man  who 
believed  more  firmly  in  a  representative  system  of  govern 
ment  than  he.  Let  us  think  who  it  was  that  gave  us  our  inde 
pendence,  our  Constitution,  our  country.  There  were  three 
millions  of  people  in  the  United  States  in  those  days,  but  the 
great  mass  of  them  were  too  busy,  too  much  engrossed  in  their 
own  affairs  to  join  in  the  winning  of  a  new  world  from  Eng 
land,  and  of  creating  a  new  government.  We  are  accustomed 
to  think  of  our  whole  people  of  that  day  as  taking  part  in  the 
Revolution.  Such  was  not  the  case.  Those  three  million  of 
people  were  wise  enough  in  their  day  and  generation  to  stick 
to  the  representative  principle  and  that  representation  was 
confined  to  such  small  numbers  that  it  finally  dwindled  to  a 
representative  Continental  Congress  and  to  George  Wash 
ington  and  the  few  thousand  men  at  Valley  Forge.  It  was  in 


A  Recall  of  Benjamin  Franklin.  31 

the  latter  representative  body  on  those  bleak  hills,  that  Wash 
ington  in  the  bitterness  of  his  soul  learned  that  the  government 
must  be  created  on  the  representative  principle  and  that  John 
Marshall,  who  came  to  Valley  Forge  a  Virginian  and  left  it 
an  American,  learned  those  great  principles  of  a  representa 
tive  government  that  gave  the  Constitution  vitality,  a  vitality 
that  has  been  based  on  one  hundred  years  of  use  of  the  repre 
sentative  system.     We  do  well  to  recall  that  it  was  men  who 
believed  in  a  representative  form  of  government  who  gave  us 
our  country,  who  gave  us  our  Constitution,  who  saved  our 
country  from  disunion  through  the  Constitution,  and  who  have 
made  this  country  under  the  Constitution  a  mighty  people. 
Let  us  remember  that  the  government  "of  the  people,  by  the 
people  and  for  the  people"  for  which  Lincoln  pled  was  the 
constitutional  government  "four  score  and  seven  years  ago 
our  fathers  brought  forth  upon  this  continent."    And  let  those 
who  would  change  the  representative  form  of  our  government 
take  heed  to  the  warning  Webster  gave  at  the  laying  of  the 
corner  stone  of  the  monument  on  Bunker  Hill:    "We  are 
placed  at  the  head  of  the  system  of  representative  and  popular 
government.     If  in  our  case  the  representative  system  ulti 
mately  fail,  popular  government  must  be  pronounced  impos 
sible."      The  principle   of  the   representative  system   is   not 
based  on  aristocracy  or  on  a  governing  class,  but  on  the  simple, 
sound,  common  sense- principle  that  the  people  select  repre 
sentatives  in  directors  who  in  turn  select  school  teachers  to 
teach  their  children;  synods  and  conventions  and  representa 
tive  men  or  bodies,  who  in  turn  elect  and  ordain  clergymen  to 
instruct  them  in  matters  religious;  schools,  examining  boards 
and  other  representative  bodies,  who  shall  qualify  physicians 
for  medicine,  plumbers  for  plumbing,  lawyers  for  law,  and  so 
on  throughout  all  the  occupations  of  life.     It  is  the  principle 
on  which  every  church  is  run  to-day  by  selecting  vestries, 
elders,  deacons  and  other  bodies  who,  in  a  representative  ca 
pacity,  select  other  representatives  to  do  the  work  of  the  con 
gregation.     It  is  the  principle  in  every  bank  by  which  the 


32  A  Recall  of  Benjamin  Franklin. 

stockholders  select  directors,  who  in  turn  select  president, 
cashier  and  those  who  do  its  executive  work.  This  Constitu 
tion  of  ours  was  based  on  the  theory  of  a  wise  use  in  certain 
ways  of  the  direct  power  of  the  people  and  a  wise  use  in  others 
of  the  judgment  and  discretion  of  representative  officials  to 
carry  out  portions  of  the  work.  They  believed  that  the  repre 
sentative  system  fixed  responsibility  on  those  chosen  and  that 
the  obligation  of  responsibility  was  created,  fostered  and 
stimulated  by  making  men  their  representatives.  They  ob 
served  in  their  own  every  day  life  that  indifferently  good  men 
were  turned  into  strong  men  by  having  the  responsibility  of 
fatherhood  put  upon  them.  They  said  that  a  man  who  was 
put  to  do  a  job  was  more  likely  to  find  some  wa^  of  doing  it 
than  a  man  who  was  simply  saying  how  it  ought  to  be  done 
but  without  doing  it.  They  believed  that  what  was  left  as 
anybody's  business  generally  ended  up  in  being  nobody's  duty. 
In  fact,  they  believed  that  government  was  like  everything 
else — it  would  not  work  itself,  and  that  either  all  the  people 
had  to  do  all  the  work  or  else  they  had  to  select  some  repre 
sentatives  to  do  it  for  them.  They  felt  that  the  true  principle 
was  to  select  representatives  and  then  sternly  look  to  them  for 
results.  And  wherever  all  the  people  have  acted  on  this  whole 
some  principle,  not  the  mere  selection  of  representatives,  but 
the  stern  holding  by  the  people  of  the  people's  representatives 
responsible  for  results,  representative  government  had  been 
and  will  be  a  government  of  the  people.  The  success  of  gov 
ernment  depends  not  on  the  wiping  out  of  representatives,  but 
in  that  vigilant  interest  of  the  people  in  seeing  the  people's 
representatives  do  their  duty.  And  if  the  interest  of  the 
people  is  so  lax  that  it  will  not  compel  its  representatives  to  do 
their  duty,  will  that  lax  interest  be  effective  enough  to  see  that 
any  other  form  of  government  is  effective  ?  Eternal  vigilance 
is  not  only  the  price  of  liberty,  but  the  price  of  liberty's  gov 
ernment  by  the  people.  It  seems  to  me  that  when  we  are  ready 
to  eliminate  representatives  in  other  lines  of  work,  the  clergy 
in  morals,  the  physician  in  medicine,  the  teacher  in  learning 


A  Recall  of  Benjamin  Franklin.  33 

—then  and  not  until  then — are  we  ready  to  give  up  the  repre 
sentative  principle  in  government.  We  are  departing  from 
these  principles  to-day.  Going  away  from  what  Franklin  and 
the  fathers  thought  was  wise,  into  the  untried  fields  of  direct 
voting,  direct  primaries,  direct  work  of  every  kind  by  the 
people.  Are  we  sure  where  we  shall  end  by  these  changes  ?  I 
recall  very  well  the  man  who  was  a  by-word  in  my  boyhood- 
all  of  whose  troubles  came  through  a  new  fender  he  bought  for 
his  home.  It  is  a  homely  story  but  it  carries  a  lesson.  Etwas 
bought  this  fender,  but  when  he  placed  it  in  front  of  his  fire 
place  the  mantel  did  not  seem  right,  and  so  the  mantel  was 
changed  and  that  brought  a  change  in  the  wainscoting  and  the 
change  in  that  room  went  into  the  hall  and  finally  the  whole 
house  had  to  be  changed  and  Etwas's  house  ended  up  in  a 
sheriff's  sale.  We  are  tinkering  with  these  changes  and  one 
change  is  the  father  of  unexpected  other  changes.  I  think 
there  is  nothing  that  has  happened  in  our  national  life  that  has 
so  distressed  the  minds  of  thoughtful  Americans  as  the  per 
sonal  conflict  into  which  our  only  two  living  holders  of  our 
highest  office  have  been  drawn  during  the  last  few  months. 
The  partisans  of  each  have  blamed  the  other  for  this  unhappy 
occurrence.  Has  it  ever  occurred  to  you  that  neither  of  the 
two  men  can  be  justly  charged  with  what  we  have  already  re 
corded  ?  Has  it  occurred  to  you  that  no  other  president  has 
been  placed  in  this  position  and  that  the  placing  of  these  two 
men  in  it  has  been  the  result  of  the  changes  that  are  taking 
place  in  our  constitutional  form  of  government?  When  the 
people  require  that  the  principles  of  the  old  representative 
system  of  presidential  nominations  shall  be  done  away  with 
— a  system  by  the  way  that  in  a  hundred  years  gave  us  no 
president  of  whom  the  nation  was  ashamed — and  that  the  men 
seeking  the  high  office  of  president  of  the  United  States  shall 
be  forced  on  the  hustings  by  the  presidential  primary,  do  we 
need  any  more  signal  and  striking  example  of  the  unlocked 
for  changes  which  change  may  bring  to  us  without  our 
wishing  ? 
31 


34  A  Recall  of  Benjamin  Franklin. 

Moreover,  by  representation  the  true  representative  becomes 
impressed  with  the  responsibility  of  not  only  representing  the 
majority  that  chose  him,  but  of  the  under-dog  in  the  fight — 
the  minority,  whose  representative  he  is,  as  a  part  ,of  the 
people.  And  history  proves  not  only  the  right  of  the  minority 
to  be  protected,  but  the  majority's  need  that  a  minority  be  pro 
tected.  There  is  no  institution  in  the  administration  of 
justice  to  my  mind  of  greater  value  than  trial  by  jury.  It  is 
the  tribunal  of  the  people  and  in  spite  of  its  occasional  miscar 
riages  the  vast  majority  of  its  verdicts  are  right.  But  if  a 
majority  of  seven  were  to  settle  its  verdict,  I  would  lose  my 
faith  in  it  for  the  enforced  agreement  of  the  other  five  is  the 
leaven  that  enables  it  to  work  justice  to  all  and  malice  to  none. 
And  a  little  reflection  shows  that  minorities  are  often  the 
people's  safeguards,  that  time  and  experience  are  needed  to 
indicate  a  minority's  view,  indeed,  that  those  great  words, 
"  government  of  the  people,  by  the  people  and  for  the  people  " 
had,  in  the  mind  of  Lincoln,  a  meaning  far  deeper  than  the 
mere  words  convey.  For,  mark  you,  those  words  were  used 
by  him  on  a  higher  plane  than  a  mere  question  of  majority. 
He  called  his  countrymen  to  "here  highly  resolve"  and  that 
"under  God"  government  of  the  people,  by  the  people  and 
for  the  people  should  not  perish.  And  what  was  this  highly 
resolved  purpose  of  Lincoln?  His  own  experience  tells  the 
story,  for  Lincoln  was  a  man  not  of  majorities,  but  of  minor 
ities.  There  never  was  any  more  direct  appeal  to  the  judg 
ment  of  the  people  than  the  great  question  which  Abraham 
Lincoln  submitted  to  the  people  of  Illinois  in  his  contest  with 
Douglass.  From  one  end  of  that  state  to  another,  with  an  ab 
sence  of  all  passion,  with  an  appeal  to  reason,  with  every 
wealth  of  light  and  instruction  and  intense  earnestness,  Lin 
coln  presented  the  great  issue  of  all  ages  to  the  people  of  Illi 
nois  for  their  determination.  But  when  the  votes  came  the 
great  champion  of  human  liberty  found  the  majority,  swept 
away  by  the  prevailing  spirit  of  the  hour,  was  against  him. 
He,  too,  for  the  time  being  was  despised  and  rejected  of  men 


A  Recall  of  Benjamin  Franklin.  35 

by  a  triumphant  majority  and  Lincoln  and  his  minority  went 
down  to  defeat.  But  though  the  majority  was  against  him, 
truth  still  remained  unchanged,  for  the  real  question  was  not 
of  men  but  of  principle.  And  to  Lincoln  in  his  minority,  as 
to  many  a  man  in  the  loneliness  of  isolated  dissent,  came  that 
needed  assurance  that,  "  in  such  a  controversy  the  majority 
principle  has  no  legitimate  place.  Where  the  weapon  is  rea 
son  and  not  force,  there  is  no  magic  in  a  multitude  of  suf 
frages.  Opinions  are  to  be  weighed,  not  numbered,  and  if 
they  will  not  bear  the  test  of  reason,  it  is  morally  impossible 
that  they  stand  as  law."  So,  too,  in  the  election  of  1860,  Lin 
coln,  while  elected,  represented  but  a  mere  minority.  The 
combined  votes  of  Douglass  and  Breckinridge,  all  of  whom 
were  against  him,  constituted  a  great  majority  of  the  nation. 
In  the  election  of  1864,  Lincoln  was  again  the  representative 
of  a  minority,  for  the  principles  he  stood  for  would  not  then 
have  commanded  a  support  of  a  majority  north  and  south,  had 
all  his  countrymen  voted.  But  who  will  say  that  Lincoln  and 
his  minority  were  wrong,  and  that  Judge  Douglass  and  his 
majority  were  right?  The  Athenians  had  among  their  many 
statutes  one  dedicated  to  "  time  which  vindicates,"  and  of  one 
of  his  noblest  characters  John  Bunyan  had  only  to  say,  "  But 
Patience  was  willing  to  wait."  Truly  time  and  patience,  and 
not  the  recklessness  of  majorities,  are  the  guardians  of  minor 
ity  principles. 

And  now  a  closing  thought.  Franklin  lived  through  one  of 
those  great  eras  of  flux  and  change — those  days  of  radical 
transition,  through  which  men  and  nations  march  or  flounder  in 
their  onward  progress.  His  was  a  period  of  tremendous  change. 
The  science  of  government — for  it  is  a  science  and  as  such 
worthy  of  the  most  thoughtful  study — was  slowly  but  irresist 
ibly  changing.  The  autocracy  of  place  and  birth  and  class 
were  crumbling  away  and  all  the  people  were  awakening  to 
the  possibilities  of  self-government.  The  absolutism  of  hered 
ity,  the  dogmatism  of  religion,  the  selfishness  of  nations,  were 
all  being  subjected  to  the  scrutiny  of  a  dawning  patriotism 


36  A  Recall  of  Benjamin  Franklin. 

and  a  growing  conviction  of  individual  right.  The  flames  of 
genius  burned  high,  the  problems  of  the  present  were  being 
illuminated  by  a  thoughtful  study  of  the  past.  And  through 
the  flame  and  fervor  and  fusing  of  awakening  ardent  brains 
came  the  birth  and  ordering  of  new  conditions.  It  was  a 
great  time  for  new  ideas  and  the  call  was  for  great  men. 
These  conditions  existed  in  the  old  as  well  as  in  the  new  world. 
But  how  different  the  outcome.  Germany,  lacking  any  cen 
tral,  towering  figure;  unblessed  by  any  broad,  unifying  po 
litical  impulse  and  cursed  by  the  selfishness  of  a  score  of 
petty  sovereigns,  fell  back  into  the  stagnation  of  stolid  indif 
ference  to  await  the  era  of  inspiration  that  came  a  century 
later.  France,  delirious  with  the  new  liberty  of  man  which, 
untempered  by  dependence  on  God,  swept  her  into  the  license 
of  the  Revolution,  misled  by  the  selfish  leadership  of  a  false 
prophet,  who  built  an  empire  on  the  sacrificed  blood  of  misled 
patriots,  drifted  back  into  a  century  of  hopeless  indifference, 
content  with  nothing,  but  accepting  everything.  England, 
closing  her  eyes  to  the  reasonable  requests  of  her  greatest  col 
ony  and  misled  by  the  ignorance  of  a  stubborn  monarch  and 
an  imbecile  ministry,  succeeded  on  the  one  hand  in  losing  her 
American  colonial  possessions  in  the  new  world,  while  in  the 
old  world  Napoleon  falsely  vaunting  himself  as  the  evangel  of 
this  reawakened  spirit  of  liberty  and  progress  cunningly  drove 
England  into  a  spirit  of  antagonism  to  all  that  was  new 
simply  because  it  was  new  and  into  a  blind  devotion  to  all  that 
was  old  simply  because  it  was  old.  And  so  it  came  about  that 
the  splendid  new  spirit  that  swept  over  Europe,  a  spirit  that 
should  have  been  its  civic  regeneration,  a  spirit  that  called 
LaFayette  and  Steuben,  Pulaski  and  Kosciousko,  Robert 
Morris  from  Liverpool  and  Albert  Gallatin  from  Switzer 
land,  to  this  side  of  the  ocean,  grasped  few  of  its  possibilities 
because  that  spirit  spent  itself  in  blind  gropings  in  a  wilder 
ness  of  leaderless  wanderings.  In  such  times  and  in  such 
seething  periods  of  unrest,  a  weak  man  may  turn  a  nation  into 
a  mob,  but  it  takes  a  great  man  to  keep  a  nation  from  be- 


A  Recall  of  Benjamin  Franklin.  37 

coming  a  mob.  And  therein  lay  the  difference  of  outcome  on 
this  side  the  Atlantic  from  this  epoch  of  unrest.  It  was  the 
far-seeing  vision  of  such  men  as  Franklin  and  the  fathers — 
wise  beyond  their  day  and  generation — who  led  the  people  by 
the  path  of  sane  and  sensible  self-control  in  the  new  order  of 
government.  It  takes  the  great  need,  the  great  crisis,  the 
great  call  of  a  great  people,  to  create  great  men  and  to  the 
new  world's  great,  heart-deep  cry  for  leadership,  Providence 
in  its  own  time  answered  then  as  it  has  always  answered  since 
when  the  cry  ascends.  What  a  glorious  roll  of  those  immor 
tals  answered  as  the  nation's  call  sounded.  With  reverence 
we  look  up  to  the  long  line  of  the  fathers,  who  each  to  that 
clarion  call  answered — Adsum — Here  am  I — Washington, 
Franklin,  Adams,  Jefferson,  of  the  Revolution,  who  gave  us 
the  Constitution  with  our  country;  Marshall  and  Webster, 
whose  united  efforts  made  that  Constitution  a  living  reality; 
Lincoln  and  Grant,  who  kept  us,  thank  God,  a  united  people 
under  it. 

Another  period  of  widespread  flux  and  change  is  upon  us 
to-day  and  not  upon  us  alone  but  upon  the  whole  world.  The 
times  are  pregnant  with  unrest  and  the  labors  of  travail  are 
upon  us.  The  great  economic,  commercial,  social  and  other 
changes  that  invention,  expansion,  centralization  have  brought 
about,  perplex,  dumfound,  dishearten  us.  We  are  just  awak 
ening  to  them  and  as  yet  we  do  not  know  how  to  meet  them. 
But  the  unrest  of  this  great  people  is  an  unrest  for  construc 
tion  and  not  for  destruction  and,  thank  God,  an  unrest  that 
honestly  hungers  for  leadership  and  light.  The  call  of  the 
nation  to-day  is  for  trusted  guiding,  and  the  lack  of  the  nation 
is  our  inability  to  answer  that  cry.  Can  we  doubt  it  will  be 
answered  ?  The  past  of  our  country  bids  us  have  no  doubt  as 
to  its  future.  The  years  of  colonial  struggle  and  unrest  ended 
in  Franklin  and  Washington.  The  many  years  of  seething 
uncertainty  through  our  pre-civil  war  era  ended  in  Lincoln, 
and  our  present  era  of  unsettled  and  unsettling  unrest  must 
end  in  leaders  that  will  speak  to  the  nation  as  these  great  men 


38  A  Recall  of  Benjamin  Franklin. 

of  the  past  have  spoken,  not  in  volumes  of  words  that  are  as 
unheeded  as  they  are  soon  forgotten,  but  in  words  and  counsel 
which,  like  the  revolutionary  fathers,  shall  ring  true  a  cen 
tury  after  they  are  spoken,  in  words  of  wise  and  sane  counsel 
and  warning  that  our  children's  children  shall  rise  up  and 
call  blessed  a  century  hence.  I  came  across  lately  some  words 
of  Sydney  Lanier's,  penned  just  after  the  Civil  War,  but 
which  strikingly  and  prophetically  voice  the  unspoken  yearn 
ings  of  the  nation's  heart  to-day.  Lanier  was  looking  forward 
to  that  sad,  hopeless  era  of  reconstruction  ahead  of  the  south 
land  and  for  which  Lincoln,  the  South's  truest  and  bravest 
friend,  was  most  needed.  He  must  have  had  the  martyred 
president  in  mind  when  he  wrote:  "I  have  been  wondering 
where  we  are  to  get  a  great  man  that  will  be  tall  enough  to  see 
over  the  whole  country  and  to  direct  that  vast  undoing  of 
things  which  have  to  be  accomplished  in  a  few  years.  It  is  a 
situation  in  which  mere  cleverness  will  not  begin  to  work. 
The  horizon  of  cleverness  is  too  limited;  it  does  not  embrace 
enough  of  the  place  of  man,  to  enable  a  merely  clever  politi 
cian  such  as  those  in  which  we  abound,  to  lead  matters  prop 
erly  at  this  juncture.  The  vast  generosities  which  whirl  a 
small  revenge  out  of  the  way  as  the  winds  whirl  a  leaf;  the 
awful  integrity  which  will  pay  a  debt  twice  rather  than  allow 
the  faintest  flicker  of  suspicion  about  it;  the  splendid  indig 
nations  which  are  also  tender  compassions  and  will  in  one 
moment  be  hustling  the  money  changers  out  of  the  Temple  and 
in  the  next  be  preaching  love  to  them  from  the  steps  of  it; 
where  are  we  to  find  these  ?  It  is  time  for  a  man  to  arise  who 
is  a  man." 

My  friends,  here  in  this  twentieth  century  the  American 
nation,  waiting  for  a  leadership,  groping  in  uncertainty,  be 
wildered  by  new  questions,  beset  by  false  prophets,  says,  with 
Lanier,  "  It  is  time  for  a  man  to  arise  who  is  a  man."  When 
Providence  and  the  unfolding  of  time  shall  answer  that  call, 
is  hidden  from  our  ken,  but  that  time  and  that  Providence  we 
can  await  with  a  fortitude  and  a  faith  born  of  the  conviction 


A  Recall  of  Benjamin  Franklin.  39 

that  the  study  of  the  lives  and  teachings  of  Franklin  and  these 
great  men  of  the  past  will  in  good  time  recall  us  to  sure  and 
safe  and  sane  paths,  horn  of  a  stern  resolve  that  these  great 
and  wise  men  shall  not  have  builded  this  great  nation  only  to 
be  undone  by  lesser  minds  and  weaker  men  and  a  profound 
faith  that,  as  in  the  past  so  now  and  hereafter,  when  the  na 
tion  is  prepared  for  leadership,  the  nation's  leader  has  and 
always  will  be  found.  And  with  no  misgivings  but  a  grounded 
faith  that  this  nation's  mission  to  its  own  people  and  to  all 
humanity,  the  mission  of  the  standard  bearer  of  constitution 
ally  limited  government,  let  us  march  forward  to  the  high 
destinies  awaiting  us  in  that  spirit  in  which  Lincoln  faced  the 
greatest  human  task  ever  allotted  to  man,  when  in  his  first 
inaugural  he  said,  "  My  countrymen,  one  and  all,  think  calmly 
and  well  on  this  whole  subject.  Nothing  valuable  can  be  lost 
by  taking  time.  If  there  be  an  object  to  hurry  any  of  you  in 
hot  haste  to  a  step  which  you  would  never  take  deliberately, 
that  object  will  be  frustrated  by  taking  time,  but  no  good  ob 
ject  can  be  frustrated  by  it.  Intelligence,  patriotism,  Chris 
tianity,  and  a  firm  reliance  on  Him  who  has  never  yet  for 
saken  this  favored  land  are  still  competent  to  adjust  in  the 
best  way  all  our  present  difficulties." 


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